[mypastself]

They’re likely alluding to articles posted on The World Economic Forum’s website. WEF is a group of wealthy, influential individuals whose goals include building what they believe is a more sustainable global economy (and society). Some of their more infamous articles have become memes (“You’ll own nothing and be happy”, “You will eat the bugs”).

The kookier versions of anti-WEF arguments veer into conspiracy theory territory, but there’s something to be said about out-of-touch wealthy individuals attempting to wield their influence to reduce e.g. developing nations use of cheap-but-nonrenewable energy sources, or reduce their consumption of more efficient sources of protein.

[ZeroGravitas]

I checked out their site, their news section has this link at the moment:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-world-econom...

> Own nothing, be happy. You may have heard the phrase. It started life as a screenshot, culled from the internet by an anonymous antisemitic account on the image board 4chan. “Own nothing, be happy – The Jew World Order 2030,″ said the post, which went viral among extremists.

Well, that's reassuring.

Meanwhile, the actual content on the WEF site is monumentally boring:

> Greater action on food loss to ensure more food is preserved for human consumption

> According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, globally 13.8% of food is lost from harvest to retail. And, of course, mitigating food loss also brings cost savings and economic benefits, while reporting can help assess the efforts to minimise food loss.

[mypastself]

The article was removed from the website after the uproar, 4chan crazies or not. It’s preserved here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...

The author later clarified they were predicting a possible future, “for better or for worse”. They didn’t outright deny they supported that specific idea, though, nor does it directly contradict WEF’s stated goals (although it’s on a much shorter timeline).

[ZeroGravitas]

So the secret conspiracy is clean energy, self-driving taxis, protected environment, and more leisure time due to increased automation?

And when intentionally publishing the plan for this secret conspiracy, on their website, cunningly disguised as a fictional take on the near future, they accidentally left in bits where they worried about digital surveillance which luckly the anti-semites on 4Chan noticed, and saved us from this dark future?

> Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

[california2077]

>So the secret conspiracy is clean energy, self-driving taxis, protected environment, and more leisure time due to increased automation?

I agree. It's completely idiotic. Clearly, all those billionaire, industrialists and politicians have our best interests in mind. They simply want a better future for all. They would probably be more inclusive in their decision-making, but it's just that an average person out there is too dumb to make any important decisions.

[mypastself]

Completely agreed. The conspiracy theories are both stupid and evil. But I don’t think being vary of the WEF or their ideas is completely misguided.

[throwaway4aday]

Nice of you to cherry pick the "good" stuff from the article. The things people take issue with are being forced to rent everything from some unknown overlords who now are the only ones allowed to own anything. You're also required to share your personal accommodations with others. Apparently money is not allowed either since no one actually pays rent but they do work so it's some version of "from each according to their ability, to each according to his needs"

> we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.

It also posits that anyone who does not submit to this regime is simply left to rot in the countryside. Implying that they live the equivalent of 19th century life probably with no electricity, running water, or medicine. Sorry, you don't get any technology if you don't want to be a serf.

> My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Living in this society also apparently means that everything you do or think is recorded and that it can be used against you, presumably by the people in power should your behavior ever displease them.

> I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

And apparently a whole lot of people died on the way to this utopia.

> We lost way too many people before we realized that we could do things differently.

No wonder a lot of people reacted poorly to this but I think that was the point. They wanted to do a limited hangout to gauge public reaction to some version of their envisioned future. That allows them to manage the blowback by saying it was just a silly article after which they delete it and then paint all of its detractors as racists and right wing nutjobs which is SOP at this point.

[somenameforme]

The issue which really started the discussion on this was not the article, which I suspect relatively few read, but the Tweet/Video that the World Economic Forum published. You can find an archive of it here: https://archive.org/details/world-economic-forum-presents-th....

It was universally poorly received, which led to them removing the video/Tweet, and it's now being censored on platforms like YouTube. Their predictions, as stated in the video, to happen by 2030, include:

- You'll own nothing.

- You'll rent everything.

- You'll eat less meat.

- "Western values will have been tested to the breaking point."

The WEF, if you are not aware, is not just some random crazy think-tank. It's a collective that, as a whole, is arguably the single most influential group in existence. Their backing companies [1] include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, WalMart, the banks, and the vast majority of massive companies you can think of. Their individual members/delegates [2] include chief executives, heads of state, and so on. The sort of group that doesn't just make predictions, but makes predictions happen.

That such a group thought society at large would respond positively to that video is simply odd. That they hold the views expressed in that video are something much worse than odd. These people, are at a minimum, unimaginably far out of touch with a society that they overtly aim to puppeteer.

[1] - https://www.weforum.org/partners#A

[2] - https://qz.com/1787762/davos-delegates-are-categorized-from-...

[ZeroGravitas]

Your link seems broken, but by googling I think I found the video on youtube.

Is this the same one that says "1 Billion people will be displaced by climate change"?

Because, that seems like a prediction of what might happen in the future, rather than a wishlist item of Bill Gates and the rest of the Pentaverat.

The video seems to be a very brief summary of this process:

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GFC_Annual_Report_2019_202...

I've already found their plans for another dystopia linked from there, they are so brazen:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/backcasting-from-a-fu...

[somenameforme]

The URL is quite odd in that it ends with a period which it seems that Hacker News is parsing, more normally, as a period instead of a part of the URL. In the following URL, manually add a period at the end:

https://archive.org/details/world-economic-forum-presents-th....

[ZeroGravitas]

So, now that we can all watch the same video.

What's wrong with these predictions?

Is it because they're wrong and we think something else will happen?

Is it because they're right and we think the academics and politicians involved in coming up the predictions are to 'blame' for them?

I really don't get it.

[somenameforme]

It's difficult to estimate the exact wealth of the WEF and their delegates/companies, but it's going to be a very large share, and likely the wide majority, of all wealth on this planet. The group that owns everything, stating you will own nothing and instead just rent [from them] is something few will regard in a positive way.

When the exact people actively working to change the world in pursuit of these predictions make them, they are no longer predictions but goals.